Labor Day 2011

Summer comes to an end on Monday — although not strictly by the calendar. The official close of summer, the autumnal equinox, is still three weeks away.

Yet Labor Day signals an ending nonetheless and perhaps nowhere more so than on a resort Island. For summer residents, this is a time to say goodbye to the Vineyard, sweep the sand from the cottage and the car, wash the salt from the dog and the children, pack the collection of speckled rocks collected from the north shore on long, lazy days, eat one last dinner out, take in one more sunset and head for the ferry to make the trek home. See you soon, Islanders say to their summer friends. Maybe on Columbus Day when the air will have turned chilly around the edges, the days golden, the ballfields full of kids playing soccer. Or maybe at Thanksgiving when puffy gray clouds will hang low in the sky, promising snow while the scallopers are out on the ponds.

Labor Day is a quiet national holiday, a singular celebration of American workers. The holiday stands apart from most others in its lack of ritual — there is no music, no traditional meal, no processions down Main street.

Odd, though. Labor Day began with a parade. Its first observance on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York city was a parade of 10,000 workers organized by Peter J. McGuire, a Carpenters and Joiners Union Secretary. Two years later President Grover Cleveland signed a bill designating the first Monday in September as Labor Day.

Perhaps reflective of the nation’s complex and shifting attitude toward organized labor, few of us ever use this long holiday weekend to celebrate workers, and most of us who have jobs try not to think about work at all as we embrace the waning days of summer.

But we can think of few issues more critical right now than employment.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports more than 153 million people 16 and older in the American labor force as of July 2011. Nearly eight million people work more than one job. This fact is of course familiar on the Vineyard where moonlighting has long been a fact of life and where the cost of living ranks among the highest, the median income among the lowest in the state.

Jobs will be the theme this year when President Obama speaks to the nation about the economy just after Labor Day.

And jobs are a principal theme on the Vineyard these days, where Islanders are still suffering a bad hangover from a real estate and construction boom that has dried up like so many puddles in the hot summer sun. The real estate sales market remains flooded with inventory — more than 800 properties are on the market, and many in the construction trades remain out of work. The correction was inevitable and some would argue necessary and even beneficial — with its finite geography the Island could not sustain such a boom for long without suffering the ruinous effects of overbuilding and development.

Nevertheless, a familiar puzzle has become more urgent: How can the Island find a sustainable economic base and move away from the boom-and-bust cycles that in the long run fray and tear at the edges of the fabric of this good, hardworking community?

A good subject to tackle as the crowds thin and Islanders turn their attention back to the far less frenetic year-round way of life, with children in school, empty beaches beckoning, and the farm stands still full of vegetables. In another week or two the bluefish will begin to run. We survived another one, Islanders tell each other as the summer season draws to a close. And we are reminded that this is still a good place to live.

Let’s take this weekend to celebrate the end of summer, but afterwards let’s get back to the essential question: how do we make sure our extraordinary Island community continues to work.